When it comes to the subject of the mind, it can be difficult for any one person to separate his or her own human experiences from the discussion at hand. The natural inclination of most people is to believe that there is something special, something uniquely human, about the processes of thinking, reasoning, and understanding. With advances in technology taking exponential leaps forward, however, the idea that science may one day – if it has not already – create an artificial intelligence equal to our own becomes ever more plausible. Searle’s piece in the course text tackles the issue head on, and it makes his case strongly and succinctly. Based on the arguments set forth by Searle, his Chinese Room Objection in particular, and my own take on the idea of understanding as a whole, I find myself in agreement with Searle on the subject of artificial intelligence. It can be tempting to believe that an advanced instance of artificial intelligence is capable of understanding when it is able to demonstrate behaviours that we typically associate with it. I refer here to the example of the storytelling computer mentioned early in the reading. The computers is able to answer questions about the hamburger story with responses that contain information not found in the story itself, because it possesses information on how human beings typically behave with regard to restaurants. This does not strike me as being equal – or even comparable – to real understanding as we humans know and conceptualize it. In many ways, this comes across to me as more of a game of probabilities; in the two versions of the story noted in the reading, the computer decides that the customer ate the hamburger in the story where he was pleased and left it alone when he was displeased. I will freely admit that this these are the most likely outcomes in either situation, but they are not sure things. Consider, for instance, that the customer could have been an eccentric person who had a fondness for the presence of hamburgers, but did not like eating them. Such a customer could have been quite amiable and pleasant to the staff, paid, left a tip, and went on their way without taking a bite. Similarly, it is not beyond the realm of possibility to believe that a customer may have been upset by the quality of his food, ate it anyways, and left without paying. They could have left without paying out of anger related to the poor quality of their meal, or because they enjoys stealing – any number of reasons could provoke a person into such behaviour. This to me highlights the artificial aspect of artificial intelligence; when all is said and done, it is a pale reflection of our own capacity to understand and reason. If this computer were truly capable of thinking on a level comparable to our own and did not have the information of whether or not the man ate the hamburger for certain, it would have responded with “probably”, “I think so”, or something along those lines. The computer’s abilities demonstrated by this example do not convince me of the A.I proponents claims that “the appropriately programmed computer literally has cognitive states and that the programs thereby explain human cognition.” Searle’s Chinese Room Objection illustrates the hollowness of the way a computer is able to understand; it simulates understanding quite well, but this is not the same thing. Searle, in this story, is a perfect equivalent to an artificial intelligence running programs, not at all unlike the computer capable of answering questions about the patron and the hamburger. A functionalist, on the other hand, would more than likely disagree. No small part of what led me to my position on this issue is my human condition; my experiences and knowledge of self, others, and – to as great a degree as a I can manage at any given time – the world as a whole. With regard to functionalism, consider the mousetrap example in the text; the particulars of each structure are not significant, only the abstract notion of catching a mouse is definitive of it. A functionalist would place the vast majority of importance on the end result; in the case of the Chinese Room Objection, for example, the end result is the fact that the Chinese answers are indistinguishable from ones that would have been given by a native speaker. Thus, a functionalist would have no trouble believing the opposite of Searle – that an advanced artificial intelligence is indeed capable of understanding.
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Bibliography
Pojman, Louis P. Philosophical Traditions: a Text with Readings. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006.